Characteristics of the tree shrew gut virome

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 26;14(2):e0212774. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212774. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

The tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri) has been proposed as an alternative laboratory animal to primates in biomedical research in recent years. However, characteristics of the tree shrew gut virome remain unclear. In this study, the metagenomic analysis method was used to identify the features of gut virome from fecal samples of this animal. Results showed that 5.80% of sequence reads in the libraries exhibited significant similarity to sequences deposited in the viral reference database (NCBI non-redundant nucleotide databases, viral protein databases and ACLAME database), and these reads were further classified into three major orders: Caudovirales (58.0%), Picornavirales (16.0%), and Herpesvirales (6.0%). Siphoviridae (46.0%), Myoviridae (45.0%), and Podoviridae (8.0%) comprised most Caudovirales. Picornaviridae (99.9%) and Herpesviridae (99.0%) were the primary families of Picornavirales and Herpesvirales, respectively. According to the host types and nucleic acid classifications, all of the related viruses in this study were divided into bacterial phage (61.83%), animal-specific virus (34.50%), plant-specific virus (0.09%), insect-specific virus (0.08%) and other viruses (3.50%). The dsDNA virus accounted for 51.13% of the total, followed by ssRNA (33.51%) and ssDNA virus (15.36%). This study provides an initial understanding of the community structure of the gut virome of tree shrew and a baseline for future tree shrew virus investigation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Databases, Protein*
  • Intestines / virology*
  • Tupaiidae / virology*
  • Viral Proteins / genetics*
  • Viruses* / classification
  • Viruses* / genetics

Substances

  • Viral Proteins

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Yunnan Science and Technology Talent and Platform Program (2017HC019). Yunnan province major science and technology project (2017ZF007). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.